...EWW...

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It's even scratched like a first gen nano..! ;-)

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Is that WordArt on the start up screen?

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you mean that iPod i bought in Beijing isn't real? well, i guess that explains why it came with a CD labeled "ITURES"

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I don't understand these knockoffs. They are so incredibly crappy looking. And the typos! Do they never actually look at a real iPod?

I mean... they are calling this an ipod! Not really a knockoff, but an outright counterfeit.

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Oh man, that thing's da bling! For €12 I wouldn't mind one for the laughability / novelty factor alone, but I'd prefer not to give the "copy" cats any further incentive. Best to steal one then! Interesting it's priced in euros and not dollars or yuan. Probably a European site spotted it first.

Is it any wonder Macs don't sell well in China?

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I am guessing that iPod's trademark means nothing in china which is why they can use it, however appls and other things that look like typo's probably are not. They probably cannot legally use the name apple because then they would be leading people to believe they are part of apple which may have stores in china.

That would be my guess but i am not an attorney. This is funny though that this is going on. I wonder if Apple is doing anything about it.

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just imagine that they make money on that €12 device

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"Is it any wonder Macs don't sell well in China?"

I dunno, I bet Marcintoh computers fly off the shelves! :)

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Oh, these are typos for sure, Crawford. Just yesterday I bought a "SONYa" player which states proudly on the box that it includes a "DIGITAL TLNER". Nice. By the way, there is a neighborhood back here in S.Paulo (Brazil) named Santa Ifigenia. This is the equivalent of a red light district of electronics, folks. Whatever you looking for, whatever you want to pay.

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At least it does FM Radio without having to buy some crappy add-on.

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the main reasons for mac doesnt sell well in china are:

- the Mac version of pirate software supply is limited online
- Mac don't do decent P2P (if you used BitComet on a PC you know what's called P2P)
- Expensive
- Poor support. Apple doesnt sell macs directly in China, they don't have the direct-sale license. So they use a massive distribution channel which always fuck the customers.

however, the story is changing.

- My friend is working high level management in Apple asia and he said apple is trying to sort direct-sale things out.
- The pirate software started to float, check www.macosx.com.cn you can basically download $billions as long as you can suffer the speed
- MacBooks/Minis are getting cheap, in terms of price and quality
- Chinese young ppl become richer and have more buying power.

blah....
my 2 cents.

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I actually had the displeasure of attempting to use one of these things. It actually has no FM radio support, even though the icon shows up in the menu. In addition, the screen is absolute crap, with backlight leaking and discoloration all over the place. Also, it became unusable within a day as no further data could be written to the thing and nothing I could do in Disk Utility would fix it. The salesgirl admitted that it was a blatantly bad rip-off they sell to foreign tourists.

...I do some desperate things when my iPod breaks on me away from home.

And as for Macs in China, computers in general are more expensive there (Macs are at LEAST $150 more in China, across the board)... and keep in mind there's a wider choice in laptops in Asia (Samsung, for example). Bootleg software aside, for that extra price, the lack of compatible software in China has just not been worth it for most people. The Intel Macs are looking to change at least that part of the dilemma, though.

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I'm a Chinese boy. When I saw this, I feel so cold......

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They use RMB in China not Euros. Get with the program.

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I live in Beijing and can tell you, Apple users are few and far between but definitely becoming more common. A G4 iBook is the must have accessory in the Bookworm Cafe! Totally agree with Eric's comments, he is basically right. Apple really does not care about the Chinese market, which i think is crazy. Basically in China if you are poor, you are REALLY poor and if you are rich you are REALLY rich. Very few people live in between but trust me, I am in luxury product marketing and in China there are enough rich people to make a really big market even if they only make a small proportion of the population.

They just opened Beijing's biggest Apple store downstairs from my office building. When i say biggest, it is about the size of an average 7-11. The staff know nothing and they are unlikely to get the C2D MBPs for months. They did have 1 mac mini and 2 iMacs but the staff didn't seem bothered about selling them. The staff are also selling pirate copies of Adobe and other mac software quietly out the back of the shop.

The bad spelling on the pirate versions has nothing to do with copyright, it is that the people who copy these things are dumb, lazy and for the most part illiterate.

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Back in August my friend and "co-author" got a chiPod from Hong Kong, and he wrote a longer piece about it on our blog. Unfortunately it's in Hungarian, but he posted some pictures too: the fake iPod came in an original (!) nano box, it even had a real iPod nano serial number engraved on it's back. There must be a lot of these floating around, we get at least 10 searches per day for the serial number from all over the world....
Anyway, if you'd like to try your Hungarian-skills, here's the link:
http://jabberwocky.extra.hu/?p=223

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One of the callers on Leo Laporte's KFI talk radio show a couple weeks back called in about one of these. They had apparently purchased the thing from a (seemingly) reputable ebay seller, and it came in a real iPod nano box, complete with serial number. So yeah, they are most definitely Out There, even for those of us living here in the States. All I can say is, caveat emptor!

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